Lynne Foster FitzGerald: Untitled; oil and plaster on canvas, 51 x 61 cm; courtesy the artist

Lynne Foster Fitzgerald's exhibition at the Tinahely Courthouse Arts Centre in Co. Wicklow is a revelation and a delight. Paint is used in an exuberant yet restrained way. The result is warm, sumptuous and highly evocative.

The paintings have a wonderfully sensuous and almost sculptural quality. The paint surface is rich and tactile with the interplay of colour and shape reinforcing a sense of childhood memories. Both of these elements combine to become signifiers of emotional states and experiences. Subtle changes of tone and colour move across the surface of the painting and the use of layered fabric and other mixed media emphasise a sense of something masked.

There is a mysterious feeling here as images seem to loom out of the background and recede into some interior space, as when recent memories are clouded and eclipsed by the intensity of childhood.

Like an old plaster wall the work echoes with a thousand stories and recollection of past lives and experiences.

Anne Henrichsen is a journalist based in Wicklow.

Lynne Foster Fitzgerald : The Ties that Bind, Tinahely Courthouse Arts Centre, Co. Wicklow, November/December 2002. The show travels to Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford and the County Museum, Cavan, in 2003.

Article reproduced from CIRCA 103, Spring 2003, p. 92